‘What is really being appropriated, in other words, is not culture but the right to police cultures and experiences, a right appropriated by those who license themselves to be arbiters of the correct forms [of] cultural borrowing.’

The collectivization of one’s own suffering, and politicization of the personal, doesn’t necessarily require the maturity, freedom and strength to think for one’s self. Self-love isn’t necessarily a virtue, after all, nor either is it honest self-reflection.

If an individual can’t persuade others with ideas and argument, they always have the recourse of grievance and collectivized victim-hood in which to retreat. It’s easy to melt back into the crowd and call others horrible names just for bringing up contrary ideas and arguments (declaring them violators of all that is right, true and good in the world, while declaring yourself closer to good intentions and the holy causes (‘-Isms’).

This taps into a pretty universal human desire: To gain as much as possible with minimal possible effort, and to view one’s self as virtuous, and one’s enemies not merely as lacking in virtue, but evil.

Whether such ideas are true is another matter, because there clearly are genuine victims suffering all manners of injustice in this world, but this particular set of doctrines far outstrips the possibilities of individuals to honestly self-reflect, learn from experience, and solve the kinds of problems which can be solved through politics.

‘There is a difference between creating a society in which we have genuinely reduced or removed certain forms of hatreds and demanding that people shut up because they have to conform to other people’s expectations of what is acceptable. To demand that something is unsayable is not to make it unsaid, still less unthought. It is merely to create a world in which social conversation becomes greyer and more timid, in which people are less willing to say anything distinctive or outrageous, in which in Jon Lovett’s words, ‘fewer and fewer people talk more and more about less and less’…’

On the many dangers of political idealism, and using political theory as the limits of your field of vision:

‘We may sum this up by saying that the more the style of what used to be called politics becomes theorized, the more political problems come to be reintrepreted as managerial. Working out the least oppressive laws under which different and sometimes conflicting groups may live peaceably together is being replaced by manipulation and management of the attitudes different groups take towards each other, with the hope that this will ultimately bring harmony. In other words, in the new form of society, human beings are becoming the matter which is to be shaped according to the latest moral idea.’

Kantian metaphysics can lead to problems in the public square, or at least something of an aesthetic retreat, by individuals, from the public square. Part of the Anglo-talent for governance has roots in the Humean empiricism Kant was to synthesize within his own platform, and I’d argue this empiricism is culturally much deeper within the Anglo-sphere. There is often more deference to the uniqueness of each of our experiences and the uniqueness each that case can bring within common-law jurisprudence.

From Intelligence Squared: Two people on either side debating whether ‘Obama’s Foreign Policy Is A Failure‘ (some rather unsurprising anti-Trump sentiment is expressed by the panelists at the outset, to some applause by the audience in NYC).

‘Contrary to what the vast majority of Americans seem to think, Saudi Arabia is not a traditional Muslim country. Saudi Arabia is an attenuated neo-fundamentalist country from having been taken over, by force of arms in the early 20th century, by a “revitalization movement”—to use Anthony F.C. Wallace’s classic 1956 description of the type. The Wahhabi movement’

and:

The Trump Administration, just possibly, had one sensible idea in foreign policy: stop playing footsie with the Iranians and organize the Sunnis to confront the real threat—creeping Iranian imperial recidivism—and to whack ISIS at the same time. But having a decent idea and knowing how to make it happen are two different things. The Saudis did not whack ISIS; if any locals did, it was the Kurds, and look where their efforts have got them.

And more broadly: It’s quite possible to bring the problems of other parts of the world into your own neighborhood along with the people you are bringing in. This can, and and unfortunately, sometimes does, include the worst elements.

Right now, service members and special forces are acting in your name as a U.S. citizen abroad, and local and federal law enforcement officials here at home, and there are many good reasons why.

When we focus on these harsh truths and bear some of the burden they carry, the conversations about freedom and responsibility tend to go better.

Eight dead so far after another Islamic terror attack, likely inspired by well-known Islamist ideology and all manner of other grievance (truck plows into pedestrians and bicyclists).

I made a prediction a few years back, in hopes of trying to peg down expected frequency rates of these kinds of attacks (I simply want to know what the risks might be). I would like to be served the facts, whatever security measures might be going-on behind the scenes.

Lawrence Wright discussed his long years reporting on Islamic terrorism (he spent some time in Egypt in his youth) at the Philadelphia Free Library. It might offer some insight.

***There is a point where I become reasonably angry as Wright mentions his creative work (good for him!) has attracted the likes of celebrities and groups of political idealists in high-society. These are types I see as not having the courage to properly confront this issue from anything outside a narrower band of their own beliefs, principles and self-interest, exposing us all to worse options, while lecturing us how to live and what to do.

On that note, others are filling in the gaps at great personal risk with courage and a more clear-eyed realism (there are many pieces to a bigger puzzle):

Subject: ‘Is England Still Influencing America?’ on Hitchens’ book ‘Blood, Class, & Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies‘ when Hitchens’ was pushing the idea that ’empire’ was the primary transmission, apparently due to his ideological commitments at the time. America must have seemed a classless paradise with institutions well-functioning and ripe to achieve justice and equality for the whole world…for some folks in the Generation of ’68.

*Includes the Firing Line opening theme of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (those damned Germans influencing us) followed by a Michael Kinsley introduction (founding editor of Slate, which has since gone more progressive under recent management).

Via Soundcloud, throwing some ideas out there: Stefan Molyneux talks with Erik Prince about strategy in Afghanistan (~25:00 min). Prince has self-interest in highlighting the bloat and waste once the Pentagon gets involved, but you know, once any organization get as big as the Pentagon (inviting policies of inclusiveness and equality and diversity, potentially above mission), then there’s bound to be a lot of waste.

My basic takeaway: Underlying American strategic objectives can and should be met with sleeker design: This would include targeted training of Afghan Army batallions and more counter-insurgency targeting of the kinds of people flowing back and forth over the Pakistani border.

Privatization, basically, means paying people with skills to do the dirty work.

As Prince points out, if coalition forces withdraw entirely, the Taliban could likely take control within a year, and remnants of IS, Al Qaeda and militant terrorist and nuke-seeking types could easily find safe-haven, battling for power amongst themselves in a mostly lawless region, posing serious risk to American and Western security once again.

**Strategically, East Asia and Eurasia seem to be gaining greater importance.

Robert Kaplan makes the argument that geography and history are destiny in Pakistan’s case:

‘Pakistan encompasses the frontier of the subcontinent, a region that even the British were unable to incorporate into their bureaucracy, running it instead as a military fiefdom, making deals with the tribes. Thus, Pakistan did not inherit the stabilizing civilian institutions that India did. Winston Churchill’s first book as a young man, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, wonderfully captures the challenges facing colonial border troops in British India. As the young author then concluded, the only way to function in this part of the world is through “a system of gradual advance, of political intrigue among the tribes, of subsidies and small expeditions.’

and:

‘The term AfPak itself, popularized by the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke, indicates two failed states — otherwise, they would share a strong border and would not have to be conjoined in one word. Let me provide the real meaning of AfPak, as defined by geography and history: It is a rump Islamic greater Punjab — the tip of the demographic spear of the Indian subcontinent toward which all trade routes between southern Central Asia and the Indus Valley are drawn — exerting its power over Pashtunistan and Baluchistan, just as Punjab has since time immemorial.’

Carving the world into ‘-Isms’, doesn’t necessarily require thought beyond the ideological framework in which it often arrives to new adherents, but it does usually require an emotional commitment and solidarity with others who find common cause. This requires common enemies.

Should you make Civil Rights the highest bar in your moral universe, you’re bound to miss other points of view, much other moral reasoning, and eventually, if you’re intellectually honest, the shortcomings and consequences of activist politics. Are you building things in your life (skills, relationships?) or are you drifting down the river of supposed liberation, justified in your anger, blame, political radicalism and idealism?

Why would you defer so much of what is in your power to make better, step by step, day by day, to a politician you’ve probably never even met?

To a bunch of people who have all the incentives to treat you as a means to an end?

‘Next month, on September 25, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil will hold a binding referendum on whether or not to secede from Iraq. It will almost certainly pass.’

We nearly overthrew Saddam the first time, encouraged the Kurds to rise up only to leave them to suffer horribly as he regained power. We went in and removed Saddam, broke the nation of Iraq as drawn, and encouraged them again. Now they’re pretty much left to fend for themselves, except for tactical, some arms, and anti-IS support.

With the recent announcement in Afghanistan, it’s almost enough to make one think there are tactical, practical and deeper reasons to engage with the radical and violent people willing to do us harm at home (aside from the ‘world community concept and with actual allies with skin in the game):

In his book Where The West Ends, Totten describes visiting Northern Iraq briefly as a tourist with a friend, and the general feeling of pro-Americanism in Kurdish Northern Iraq that generally one can only feel in Poland, parts of the former Yugoslavia etc.

Lawrence Wright discussed his long years reporting on Islamic terrorism (he spent some time in Egypt in his youth) at the Philadelphia Free Library. It might offer some insight.

***There is a point where I become reasonably angry as Wright mentions his creative work (good for him!) has attracted the likes of celebrities and groups of political idealists in high-society. These are types I see as not having the courage to properly confront this issue from anything outside a narrower band of their own beliefs, principles and self-interest, exposing us all to worse options, while lecturing us how to live and what to do.

On that note, others are filling in the gaps at great personal risk with courage and a more clear-eyed realism (there are many pieces to a bigger puzzle):

A rundown on global politics led by a comparison with what was facing British leadership under Margaret Thatcher, as applied to Russia, China, and the Middle East.

Kissinger:

‘She put forward challenges which, in their essence, are even more urgent today:

Should Russia be regarded as a potential threat or a partner?

Should NATO turn its attention to “out of area” issues?

Should NATO admit the new democracies of Central Europe with full responsibilities as quickly as prudently possible?

Should Europe develop its own “defense identity” in NATO?’

Click through a brief analysis of each of the ‘out of area’ players. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

He finishes with:

If the West stays engaged without a geo-strategic plan, chaos will grow. If it withdraws in concept or in fact—as has been the temptation over the past decade—great powers like China and India, which cannot afford chaos along their borders or turmoil within them, will gradually step into the West’s place together with Russia. The pattern of world politics of recent centuries will be overthrown.

Kissinger has been consistent in applying a lifetime of experience in diplomacy and the halls of power, profound Kantian-influenced idealism, and high ambition in providing grand visions and strategies of world players and events.

As he points out, each ethnic group, nation state and civilization has its own history, character, internal struggles and challenges. It would serve American decision-makers well to have some awareness of who we’re dealing with, as many of these players have interests in direct conflict with American, Anglosphere and Western interests.

Imagine you are getting the daily intel briefings describing Russian meddling and constant attempts to destabilize American institutions (Cold War games go on, comrade), or the constant state-sponsored Chinese attempts to probe and hack American business and national defense interests. It’s par for the course and everybody does it!

Imagine someone’s advising you of Iranian regime-support of nuclear black-market technology-swapping and terrorism against American assets and interests throughout the Middle-East (wow, there are some nasty people in Tehran).

The Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment West is probably still in an export phase of influence, but others do not necessarily think as we do, and the world can be a pretty dangerous, lawless and challenging place.

As previously posted: On Niall Ferguson’s new Biography (Kissinger’s probably such a bogeyman to some on the Left because he has an aroma of the heretic, or someone who broke with the ideals, or compromised)- ‘Kissinger: Volume I: The Idealist.1923-1968:’

A good background and synopsis of American/Iranian diplomacy, and of the Iranian regime’s likely aims to become a Shia-led, anti-American/Western Islamist Republic dominating the Middle-East with deliverable nukes:

‘Some adjustments are inherent in the inevitable process of historic evolution. But we must avoid an outcome in which Iran, freed from an onerous sanctions regime, emerges as a de facto nuclear power leading an Islamist camp, while traditional allies lose confidence in the credibility of American commitments and follow the Iranian model toward a nuclear-weapons capability, if only to balance it.

Future generations’ prospects and American blood is still on the line.

There’s a sober realism, reasonable use of statistics, and deeper analysis I find appealing: The number of immigrants each country can absorb is ever in flux and dispute, but it likely has limits. When problems of immigration are backed into as they have been for a few generations (cheap labor, post WWII exhaustion and colonial guilt), harder choices and worse outcomes loom.

European birth rates are low, European economies are relatively more static and weaker than ours, and the political ideals and sentiment at work in Europe seem capable of uniting only to produce many of the problems at hand.

Political leaders frequently elide questions of basic security (Islamic/ist terror), numbers (of immigrants and incentives), as well as the shortcomings and failures of large, top-down bureaucratic institutions to develop legitimate authority and properly allow individuals to mediate their own challenges locally.

Hey, I can’t complain. My car got broken into a few years back (they took some valuables and made off with some empty luggage in the trunk). A guy got shot not that far away, too, a year after that. A single shot on a Sunday afternoon (a bit shocking, really), which was rumored to be part of a low-level drug-deal gone bad in a nearby neighborhood complex. All in all, a pretty safe neighborhood, especially since then.

Walter Russell Mead has a series built upon the argument that the ‘blue’ progressive social model (building the Great Society) is defunct because America will have to adjust to new economic and global realities. In the [then] current post, he focuse[d] on the part of the model that creates and directs government agencies to try and alleviate inner-city poverty and its problems.

Making normative the more anarchic, transgressive and illegal, as some radical activist thought becomes mainstream